Exercise devices used to aid athletes are well known in the art. For example, foam or hardwood blocks are currently used while performing certain yoga poses or during stretching. These blocks provide numerous benefits including: shortening the distance between the ground and the body for difficult poses, modifying poses for practitioners requiring increased flexibility, aiding the practitioner to hold a pose more comfortably for longer periods of time, reducing the chance of injury due to muscle strain and fatigue, and/or providing support by allowing the body to maintain proper alignment.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,156,791 to Edwards discloses an exemplary yoga grip block having one or more block sections and a grip section that provides support and comfort in the practice of yoga exercises. Similarly, U.S. Patent Application Publication 2013/0274078 to Andrews discloses a wrist saver block that decreases the amount of stress and strain felt by a user's wrist joint by providing a handle that is gripped when performing upper-body weight-bearing exercises. Both the yoga grip block and the wrist saver block are said to reduce wrist-strain of yoga practitioners. However, they do not allow the user to customize a workout to incorporate the benefits of another sporting activity, such as weight training.
While lightweight devices, like yoga blocks, are well suited for assisting specific physical activities (e.g., certain stretches or yoga positions), they are ill-suited for activities that require the use of handheld weights, such as hybrid workouts. Such workouts are growing in popularity and provide various health benefits for the participant. For example, combining weight training with yoga allows the participant to effectively tone and strengthen muscles simultaneously in a way that cannot be obtained from practicing weight training or yoga alone.
Dumbbells are often the first choice of a yoga practitioner who wishes to add weight-lifting to a yoga routine, or otherwise increase the resistance of certain yoga exercises. Dumbbells are used for providing resistance training in a wide variety of exercises such as bicep curls, weighted squats, shoulder presses, triceps extensions, and the like. However, due to the number of exercises that may be performed with dumbbells, users often need many different dumbbells, each with different weights, to perform an exercise routine. Moreover, a yoga practitioner will still require a separate yoga block for certain exercises.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2009/0023563 to Liang discloses a body tone exercise brick having a recessed portion that houses weights and a handle. The handle can be placed within the recessed portion of the brick to decrease the amount of stress and strain felt by user's wrist joint when performing upper-body weight-bearing exercises, and can also be attached to the weights to create a free weight dumbbell that can be used for weight training exercises. However, the body tone exercise brick requires assembly of the weights with the handle to be used as a dumbbell and further requires disassembly to use the handle within the brick to reduce wrist stress and strain. Assembling and disassembling the components of the body tone exercise brick causes frequent interruption to a workout and does not allow a user to flow from one position to the next efficiently or effectively.
In light of the aforementioned and other limitations and failings of known exercise devices, there is a clear need for an exercise device that combines the benefits of handheld weights with the posture and stretching-assistance benefits of a yoga-type block. It would be beneficial if the weight of such a device was easily adjustable by a user.